Making Ignorance Chic
By MAUREEN DOWD
Published: October 19, 2010
Maureen admires a certain dumb blonde:
The false choice between intellectualism and sexuality in women has persisted through the ages. There was no more poignant victim of it than Marilyn Monroe.
She was smart enough to become the most famous Dumb Blonde in history. Photographers loved to get her to pose in tight shorts, a silk robe or a swimsuit with a come-hither look and a weighty book — a history of Goya or James Joyce’s “Ulysses” or Heinrich Heine’s poems.
What’s more, she read some of them, from Proust to Dostoyevsky to Freud to Carl Sandburg’s six-volume biography of Lincoln (given to her by husband Arthur Miller), collecting a library of 400 books.
A list of those books as well as lots more pictures of Marilyn Monroe reading, or pretending to read, can be found at the Booktryst blog.
Included in the list are:
297) American Rights: The Constitution In Action, by Walter Gellhorn
This is a book I doubt Christine O' Donnell is familiar with. Perhaps the current crop of political airheads, blonde or otherwise, can learn a few things.
